Eight tour victories
in his first four seasons with John Force Racing answered any nagging
questions about Jimmy Prock’s ability to tune a temperamental
fuel Funny Car.

This year, though,
the junior member of the John Force Racing “braintrust”
embarked on a new challenge, that of integrating rookie driver Robert
Hight into a program that is accustomed to success.

It took him just
three races to put his new driver on the “pole” for the
first time and just four to get him to the winners’ circle. All
that remains is a run at the NHRA POWERade championship that has been
the exclusive property of JFR for the last 12 seasons.

The upside of
the Prock-Hight alliance was that Hight knew what was expected of him
after having worked for six seasons as a crewman on Force’s championship-winning
Castrol GTX® Ford Mustang.

The downside was
supposed to have been that the 35-year-old Hight never had driven a
car of any kind until he climbed into the cockpit of the Automobile
Club of Southern California Mustang last season as the team’s
official “test driver.”

Apparently, that
downside was overstated.

Once considered
a “dragster guy” because his initial success was achieved
in Top Fuel dragsters (three tour victories with Cory McClenthan; 18
more with Joe Amato), Prock actually was hired at the end of the 2000
season to oversee the build-up of an anticipated JFR dragster. When
that program failed to materialize, he was assigned instead to the team’s
third Mustang Funny Car.

Known for building vast quantities of horsepower in dragsters, many
doubted that the Detroit native’s “go for the jugular”
mentality would play in a Funny Car division in which the cars have
more weight, less downforce and a shorter wheelbase.

Not only was Prock
quickly able to master the nuances of Funny Car racing, he
also was able to teach a thing or two to the other crew chiefs at John
Force Racing including his mentor, Austin Coil.

“Jimmy’s
a guy who, when you come down to the last qualifying session and you’re
not in the show says ‘I think we can run low ET,’”
Force said. “He never thinks about backing it down just to get
it in the program. He’s always going for the throat.”

That’s why
Force wanted Prock for the third Funny Car: because he wasn’t
married to conventional Funny Car ideology. In adapting his Top Fuel
combination to the Auto Club Mustang, he made the entire team more potent.

Of course, Prock’s
success should not have surprised anyone. After all, he started going
to the races with his father, former Funny Car driver Tom Prock, when
he was only 11. A three-time NHRA tour runner-up in his own right, the
elder Prock introduced his son to some of the biggest names in the sport
including Tom “the Mongoose” McEwen and Kenny Bernstein.

“I did ‘whatever,’”
Jimmy Prock recalled. “I cleaned parts. I assembled. I had a good
chance to learn because (my dad) always worked with good people.”

Nevertheless,
it wasn’t until the family moved to California that Prock decided
to make his career in the sport. Before moving from Michigan, he seriously
was into hockey. Unfortunately for those against whom he now competes,
1980s’ California didn’t offer a lot of opportunities to
hone his slap shot.

So, as soon as
he graduated high school, he was “gone racing.” Working
with veteran Ronnie Swearingen, he helped put independent Funny Car
driver John Martin in two finals before a 1989 bout with diabetes almost
ended his career – and his life.

“I didn’t
know what I had and we just kept going,” Prock recalled. “I
just kept getting sicker and finally I went to the doctor. We were in
Phoenix. I really couldn’t even function. When I came home, the
doctor looked at me and just put me right in the hospital. They put
IVs right in me. They said I was about ready to go into a coma.”

Today, he manages
the situation through diet and insulin shots.

Once his health
stabilized, Prock went to work with Dick LaHaie, from whom he learned
the dragster business, and in 1991 he hooked up with Cory Mac,.

Prock and McClenathan
startled the sport in 1992 by making a serious run at the NHRA Top Fuel
championship before losing the title by today’s equivalent of
nine points.

When money got
tight, Prock jumped to Amato’s camp, where he remained until the
five-time NHRA Champion climbed out of the cockpit at the end of the
2000 season. Now, he’s a “Funny Car guy” again, but
nobody seems to be laughing – except, maybe, Force and Hight.